When painting, for instance, it is often necessary to protect surfaces adjacent to the surfaces to be painted. A conventional "masking tape" may be used for the purpose, i.e. a relatively ordinary tape with limited adhesive effect, which can be removed after painting. Conventional masking tape sufficies at least for brush paintwork, but if the paint is to be sprayed on, problems arise since for reasons of expense and ease of manipulation, the masking tape cannot be made sufficiently wide to cover an area corresponding to the distance the spray-paint will spread from the edge of the area being painted. Protective paper is therefore often used when spray-painting, masking tape being secured along one edge of the paper while partially overlapping the paper. The tape and the adherent protective paper are then applied on the desired place. However, the technique is tedous, time-consuming and does not always provide satisfactory protection, especially in corners and so on. Furthermore, the paper web tends to weight down the tape, thus tending to tear it off, for what reason the paper must often be secured additionally with pieces of tape. Moreover, the web of paper must often also be cut to fit the surface to be preotected or screened off.
A covering material has been proposed which circumvents or eliminates one or more of the drawbacks mentioned above. This covering material, particularly a masking material is substantially characterised by a strip having a first edge portion provided on one side of the strip with a relatively pressure-sensitive adhesive, and a second edge portion joined to the first edge portion, said second edge portion being gathered transversely to its longitudinal direction and can be spread out. The second edge portion is preferably pleated across its longitudinal direction so that the bands defined by one or more pleats lie substantially parallel and overlapping in the plane of the web. The strip is arranged in the form of a storage roll, the strip being pulled out and secured by the adhesive side of the first edge portion, along the edge portion of the surface to be covered. When the strip has been applied to the extend desired, by means of the adhesive, the other edge portion can be spread out as far as desired. The second edge portion is preferably formed of a foil material having slightly adhesive effect so that the second edge portion adheres to the surface to be covered. The foil may be a thin plastic foil which, by a suitable choice of material or material properties, can easily be arranged so that the electrostatic effect exhibited by such plastic foils produces an adhesive effect against a contact surface. The first edge portion is suitably provided on the other side of the strip with a release agent preventing the adhesive from adhering to the other side of the web in the first edge portion in the roll. The adhesive may alternatively be covered by a tear-off protective foil. The strip of covering material may be formed of a conventional strip of tape and a pleated strip of foil, the tape strip being attached with partial overlap to one edge portion of the foil strip, the gathered section of the foil strip being arranged beside the tape in the plane of the complete strip. The part of the tape strip not covered by the foil strip then constitutes the first edge portion of the strip, and the foil strip constitutes the second edge portion of the complete strip. The pleated section may then be formed on the other side of the complete strip and be arranged beside the tape in the plane of the complete strip. The second edge portion preferably has its free edge section protruding from the gathered section in a direction away from the first edge portion of the complete strip. This enables the edge area of the second edge portion to be easily gripped in order to spread the second edge portion by a simple pulling action.
It will be understood that the covering material described here can easily be used to mask and cover a surface and that the effective width of protection given by the strip can be varied by adjusting the spread of the second edge portion.
The covering material is applied by pulling a suitable length from a storage roll, suitably while at the same time securing the edge portion provided with adhesive to the surface in question. With the object of facilitating application it has been proposed that the storage roll be kept in a cylinder or box provided with a feed-out opening and an adjacent shearing edge, allowing the web of material to be torn off after a suitably length has been pulled out. When pulling out the material, the cylinder is held in one hand while ensuring with the other hand that the adhesive edge portion adheres to the surface. Depending on where and how the protective material is to be applied, it may be necessary to change hands to hold the cylinder or to hold the cylinder in various directions, which may be inconvenient from the working point of view.